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Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

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Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#181

Post by hollerith »

jjcm wrote: post #28

I've experienced a lot of these things since leaving the bay area and moving to Australia. The thing that surprised me most was similar to point #3 - in Australia the less fortunate are taken care of. One big mental drain I had in America was when my friends were sick but could do nothing about it. I had a roommate in Seattle who had severe dental problems and chronic tooth pain, but could do nothing about it because…

>One big mental drain I had in America was when my friends were sick but could do nothing about it

It would be nice to know whether a significant fraction of what you describe happened after 2014, which is approximately when the major provisions of Obama's health-care reforms kicked in.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#182

Post by lagg »

fizzledbits wrote: post #174
wool_gather wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's one possible take on the difference of perspective. There's a distinction to be made in the nature of the output . Feynman's physics work was investigating nature on behalf of humanity. What artists produce is spiritually/intellectually/emotionally edifying for other people. Contrast this with OP's [killing themselves to make a rich banker richer][0], or, say, working on the next addictive mobile game. This is…

To my mind that isn’t a meaningful distinction. If an artist is doing no harm, and is meanwhile enthralled by his work and his individual notions of beauty or truth or excellence, then I admire his vitality. I don’t know what OP does, but I similarly appreciate his passion. I do believe that much of the heat he’s taking is from people projecting their own insecurity and lack of fulfillment, or some other form of jeal…

Well I'll say one thing about the "heat", I didn't expect this thread to get so noisy and thought my post was going to defuse it so now I regret that. I thought I was being nice.

Anyway, speaking of projection. I'm not the one that said a single thing about domain or work-life balance. You're making up stuff in your brain based on your just-stated tendency towards a false sense of superiority. Which is funny given the point of my damned original post.

Whatever. I give up. I'm only here because the site for and by hackers doesn't have an account delete button.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#183

Post by dang »

fastball wrote: post #79
boudin wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fine by me, but it's meaningless since it's not adjusted. And anyway, still not the case https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(no...

You're really not very good at this. GDP per capita is not the same as GDP. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

You repeatedly crossed into personal attack and incivility in this thread. We ban accounts that do that. Would you mind reviewing the site guidelines and using HN as intended in the future? We'd appreciate it greatly.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#184

Post by dang »

boudin wrote: post #120
fastball wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You were presumably responding to "America is the most rich and powerful country in the world", since that is the only relevant portion of the comment you replied to where interjecting a comment about GDP would make any sense at all. The US, as a nation, has the highest GDP, and therefore is the wealthiest nation in the world. The individual wealth of Americans is lower than some other countries (but not many), but t…

I'm gonna stop answering because you're being misleading on purpose, but you can't say the USA is the richest because people in other countries are laid back worker when the GDP per capita is lower than the other mentionned country. It means that there's just more people but that they are quite "less productive" (i personnaly think that's it's a stupid way to judge people productivity though, i just responded to this…

> you're being misleading on purpose

I realize you were provoked, but please don't break the site guidelines even when another account is doing so. That's the only way to prevent a downward spiral.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#185

Post by floaters »

adamnemecek wrote: post #4
kyledrake wrote: post #2

Sure, but it's also really expensive to live in Switzerland. Not factoring in the cost of living over there is pretty disingenuous. And it's going to be a serious project to get residency there if you're not a Swiss citizen. Edit: This is not an opinion, cost of living in Switzerland is highest in the world, twice as high as in the US. Even if you make twice as much money, you're basically making the same amount. And…

The point isn't that all of america should move to Switzerland but that America can take some Swiss ideas and implement them here. In Switzerland, your neighborhood votes on whether you should become a citizen.

>In Switzerland, your neighborhood votes on whether you should become a citizen.

I didn't know that. That's very cool.

You're also the only person who's right about the point of the article. It seems like most people here didn't read it yet responded with half-cocked tribalism.

That said implementation would be difficult. The youngest voting block would need to be inspired en masse to participate in local government. Municipal and County first, then State.

That would be a realistic source of change. The current status quo has no incentive to implement changes like this.

The other hurdle is that even at a local level America has a brand of corruption that blocks this sort of progress if it doesn't have enough popular momentum. It's not just political. It's related to taxes and how money is moved around and handled that the article hints at. For example, America has a lot of small businesses that sell many different things but their one real job is cleaning money.

There's also the fact that historically American culture is more competitive and exclusive socially than places like Switzerland. Getting people here to work together and look beyond their differences for something that's just practical problem solving is easier said than done.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#186

Post by hellisothers »

krooj wrote: post #111
ryaniscool wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same experience and background as you. I worked for Atlassian in Sydney from 2008-2013. I found Australia to be a relative Utopia compared to the USA. After traveling around to other countries and living in Australia, then coming home, I realized that America is one of the most indoctrinated cultures I've experienced. We're indoctrinated with the idea of our own superiority. We can't see how much better other countri…

I currently live/work in the Bay Area, but am a Canadian ex-pat. Over the past year, I've had a series of health-related issues which have me chomping at the bit to either move back to Canada or another country which has a sane healthcare system. The issue with the states isn't just that you might go bankrupt over medical bills, I've found that there's also a huge disparity in quality of care. Back in Canada, you'd g…

Not saying your experience isn’t valid but I’ve had several Canadian friends tell stories the other direction. They were amazed at the level of care they got in the Bay Area as opposed to Canada saying that yes care is available to everybody but you often have to wait a long time and it’s generally mediocre. Grass is greener?

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#187

Post by masonic »

adamnemecek wrote: post #4
kyledrake wrote: post #2

Sure, but it's also really expensive to live in Switzerland. Not factoring in the cost of living over there is pretty disingenuous. And it's going to be a serious project to get residency there if you're not a Swiss citizen. Edit: This is not an opinion, cost of living in Switzerland is highest in the world, twice as high as in the US. Even if you make twice as much money, you're basically making the same amount. And…

The point isn't that all of america should move to Switzerland but that America can take some Swiss ideas and implement them here. In Switzerland, your neighborhood votes on whether you should become a citizen.

  In Switzerland, your neighborhood votes on whether you should become a citizen.
In the USA, you'd be vilified as a NIMBY for far less.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#188

Post by esjeon »

mruts wrote: post #7
llamataboot wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's okay, you can sub most any country in Europe in, and still end up with a much more sane work culture than the US.

Many people (including myself), don't want a laid back work culture. I want to kill myself for the firm, and work as hard as humanly possible. I think I just derive the most happiness from working (though I do like drinking as well). I know a lot of other people like this. Maybe you can call us brainwashed or whatever, but this is how myself and most of my co-workers are. I don't think it's an accident that America i…

[flagged]

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#189

Post by masonic »

cpursley wrote: post #13
S_A_P wrote: post #8

Transportation is the biggest difference between the us and a lot of the rest of the world. Switzerland is the size of a small New England state. Mass transit is a tough thing to scale. That said I’ve noticed that a lot of the jobs in the us that would be considered “glamorous” are by and large the lowest paying jobs with the longest hours. Looking past the status of a company and career and looking into the practica…

> Mass transit is a tough thing to scale. Is it? Russia is the largest country on the planet and they have had mass transit figured out for nearly a century. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Russia

Between major cities, anyway.

In the Far East and north, Salekhard-Igarka is still unfinished after over 70 years, even with years of slave labor.

Re: Living in Switzerland ruined me for America and its lousy work culture (2016)

#190

Post by masonic »

JBorrow wrote: post #16
Reedx wrote: post #9

Is Switzerland producing anything like SpaceX? Or Google? Or Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Tesla, Stripe, Y Combinator? More importantly, would we have produced these with their system? If so, then great, but let's see the evidence. No problem to have a work culture preference, and things could definitely be improved(!!), but I think we're kidding ourselves that there are no tradeoffs and everything would simply be better.…

The US has a population 40 times higher, that's not really a fair comparison. Also: Nestle, Logitech? Just because they don't have shiny frontmen doesn't mean they aren't worthy. Google also has a large AI research department in Switzerland.

You might want to bear Nestle's corporate ethics in mind before touting them as something to be proud of.
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